Meg Whitman: HP Will Show Revenue Growth This Year

HP CEO Meg Whitman says that by the end of this
year, or maybe the beginning of next, the company's decline in
sales will reverse itself.

That's one of the milestones she says HP will hit in her
five-year plan to turn HP around.

The first year has not been good. HP has announced massive
layoffs, a pair of $8 billion writeoffs on the company's two
biggest acquisitions, and accusations of fraudulent accounting.
The company's battered shares are trading at about half what they
were before Whitman took office.

Alan Murray: How much patience are you going to need from
investors? When do you get out of the hole?

Meg Whitman: I was very clear about the turnaround. One of
the things that I think is so important, and that I learned on
the governor's campaign, which is transparency of communication.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say and deliver along the lines
that you say you will deliver.

So we laid out a turnaround that last year we characterizes as
figure out what was wrong -- really wrong and lay out a
foundation to turn it. This year is fix and rebuild, introducing,
as I said, whether it be our mid-tier 3Par storage, or our
networking product or our new devices that will access this whole
new style of IT. And then you'll start to see the
sales trajectory turn at the end of this year, beginning of
next.

But I said to get HP running the way I want it to be running, I
said this is a five-year turn. There will be milestones along the
way along the way.

Despite all the drama surrounding HP's litany of bad news, the
real problem is the declining state of the company's business.
In its most recent quarter, revenue was down 5% to 14%
year over year in each business unit.

And there don't seem to be any amazing new products or services
in the wings that could pull the company out of this nosedive.

But the ship will stop sinking by year's end, Whitman has now
promised.